Petty Enterprises donates racecars to research lab

WSLS News Staff
Published: March 10, 2008

One of NASCAR’s most famous families want to make sure future generations of NASCAR fans can learn how to build and design better racecars.

Richard and Kyle Petty donated two of their retired #43 Nextel Cup race cars from Petty Enterprises, to be used as research tools at the Virginia Institute for Performance Engineering and Research (VIPER) in Halifax County.

Graduate students studying for their mechanical engineering degrees will get to use them at VIPER, which is located at Virginia International Raceway (VIR).

According to news release, the VIPER is one of four mechanical engineering/motor sports-related research labs affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research in Danville, an outreach effort of Virginia Tech in partnership with the local community.

VIPER Director Steve Southward said in the news release, “We are thrilled to have the race cars in the lab for hands-on experience. Working with these cars on our eight-post shaker rig allows our students to put what they learned about chassis engineering in class into practice in a way that leads to real know-how.” The institute’s eight-post shaker rig, known as VIPER 8 post, tests vehicular suspension systems and is the only one of its kind in North America for commercial testing, according to the news release.

Two former Virginia Tech mechanical engineering students have worked for Petty Enterprises in the past, according to Team Manager Jerry Freeze, in the news release.

According to the news release, the Petty’s decision was prompted by the Nextel Cup’s move to the “Car of Tomorrow” in 2008, necessitating the retirement of standard-model race cars following the final Ford 400 Nextel Cup Series race in November 2007.  Because of that, most of the cup cars were relegated to driver-development programs or were sold to Automobile Racing Club of America teams for pennies on the dollar. However, Petty Enterprises chose to donate some of their cars to engineering programs designed to produce future racing engineers.